


Lesser Evils

by HeRell_77



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Ancient History, Badass, Blood Drinking, Blood Magic, Blood and Gore, Blood and Injury, Complete, Deaf Character, Demons, Dystopia, Evil, Female Anti-Hero, Goddesses, Good and Evil, Hero or villain, Minor Character Death, Monsters, Moral Dilemmas, Morally Ambiguous Character, Near Death, Origin Story, Original Character(s), Orphans, Other, Overpowered, POV Alternating, POV Multiple, Parent Death, Post-Apocalypse, Prequel, Resurrection, Revenge, Short, Sign Language, Vampires, mute character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2019-01-27
Packaged: 2019-09-20 22:30:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 6,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17031165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeRell_77/pseuds/HeRell_77
Summary: ****COMPLETE****** A short story written in 9 parts— An ancient evil wakes from eternal slumber (that she put herself into out of boredom) to a post-apocalyptic world. Without a world to rule, she is bemused and bored enough to help a little mute human boy looking for his father. Not a romance. ****"Goddess? I am no goddess. I am death. I am chaos. I am the end. I am the void. I am savior to no thing."





	1. Lady Void

**Author's Note:**

> This short story is horror/gore and will not feature any romance/sex.

I never thought I'd wake again, so coming to consciousness to the utter silence that met my ears and the rest of my senses was almost like not waking at all. I sat up slowly, staring around at the four males— drakán if I wasn't mistaken— watching me with wide, pleased gleams in their dark eyes. 

"My lady," one murmured in the tongue I last remembered. I flinched at the gravel in his voice that broke that musical silence, and immediately lashed out, ending his life with a swipe of my claws. The others went down even quicker, the filthy creatures, until only one remained. 

"My lady!" he cried, his voice even more worse than the first. I hissed at him, leaping up from the body of the last male I had slaughtered to finish him. "We awoke you, our goddess, to aid us in our time of need! The vampír have overtaken the earth; they have killed off most of the humans— there is barely anything left to feed on! They have bred until there are too many to sustain— we feed on their scraps only! We woke you to right this injustice! We freed you from your prison!"

I cocked my head, feeling my knotted hair twisting around my shoulders at the movement. 

"Goddess?" I growled, keeping my voice low. Fuck, that silence had been perfect and serene. I wanted that back. "I am no goddess. I am death. I am chaos. I am the end. I am the void. I am savior to no thing."

"My lady, pl—!" the male began, but I was finished with that damn noise he was making. So I ended his life and licked the blood and chunks of the four dead drakán from my fingers as I stared around me. 

I was in a large stone chamber— a cave maybe? The walls were rough stone that glittered in what I assumed was starlight— I could not feel the moon's light through the stone. 

The silence and peace was so complete in that cave, no sight, sound or sense of any living beings, it took me many parcels of time to leave the rotting corpses of the misguided drakán behind and venture out into the desert that surrounded my gravesite. 

The place I had interred myself centuries-- millennia? — before, when my immortal life began to grow... tedious. 

And those imbeciles had woken me, probably hearing some misbegotten stories of my favoring the drakán. 

All creatures believed what they wanted to believe. The truth was never that simple.


	2. The Taking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "It's too late, Jayk," Daddy said, his eyes watching the forest. "They know we're here. We can't hide. Run. Run, now!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jayk is mute, not deaf. But there was no mute tag, so I tagged it deaf.... hopefully that works :):)

My daddy was out on the edges of the forest chopping wood when the first warning went out — one of the border alarms. The three women and the old man we were hiding out with in that tiny cabin quickly moved into their oft-rehearsed roles. While I ran for my daddy. He was already on his way back in, his wrist alarm beeping so quietly I could barely hear it over the pounding of my heart in my ears and my throat. 

I grabbed his arm to yank him towards the cabin, hand signing rapidly, no sound escaping my mouth except the near-soundless puffs of air. 

_Hurry, Daddy!_ I signed when he barely budged at my touch. 

"It's too late, Jayk," Daddy said, his eyes watching the forest. "They know we're here. We can't hide. Run. Run, now!"

Obedience was ingrained so deeply in me, since from birth my survival has depended on obeying my father with no hesitation or question, that my feet were carrying me into the forest before I even had a chance to process his words fully. And it was from behind the heavy shrubbery that I watched, my hands covering my mouth even though screams in the back of my throat couldn't escape even if I tried to let them, as a dozen vampires entered the little clearing where our cabin was that we had lived in for only a few months. 

I tried to close my eyes as the vampires tore the old man apart, attacking each other to get the bigger pieces of him as his blood flew through the air in morbid arcs. The women's screams were high-pitched and my ears rang with a whooshing sound I knew was trying to make me pass out. 

I stared in horror, my eyes refusing to shut, as my daddy ran towards the cabin and disappeared inside, a shotgun cocked at his shoulder. He shouted, the gun blasted twice, and then I didn't hear anything more from him. 

It felt like hours before the women's screams faded, whimpered out, and then they were silent. The old man was only a few bones and blood-wetted grass when the vampires pulled away from their huddle around his body, the few from inside the cabin exited, and they began to move into the forest. Luckily, in the same direction they had come — the opposite direction from where I lay watching them. 

The last three vampires to exit the cabin had me thanking God that He had taken my voice when I was a child, for surely the gasp of air that escaped me would have been deafening if I had a voice box to back it up. For dragging behind the vampires, hog tied with their hands and legs behind their backs, were Adalaid... and my father. Both with heaving chests. 

Alive.


	3. Lady Vengeance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The vampír were to blame for decimating the population of perfectly good food. For this, I swore they would pay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story probably won’t be very popular ‘cause it’s not romance or anything, but I enjoyed writing it * shrugs *

I travelled leisurely for many turnings of the moon, exploring the much-changed world I had woken in, before I came to any kind of mortal encampment, and of course it was a nest of vampír I came across first. Filthy parasites that they are. I've always hated them. Blood is mine to drink, especially human blood. Humans have the shortest lifespans of any sentient creatures, so their blood is the sweetest, the purest, the least tainted by time. And the vampír had the audacity to take from me the delicate wine of human blood, to try to feed on what was mine by _right_. 

And now, according to the idiots who had woken me, the vampír had dared to destroy the balance of the earth. The balance that not even I had dared to try to tame. And I had seen the evidence of it as I moved across the desolate earth — what I could see had once been great cities, burned to ashes or simply left to rot, nature reclaiming what the humans had been forced to leave behind. Giant metal, stone and glass pillars — which I knew must have been created by the humans (they always were ingenious children), metal contraptions with wheels like horseless chariots, and roads paved in tar. These were left to rot in the scorching sun and rain that would eventually reclaim them completely. 

And the vampír were to blame for decimating the population of perfectly good food. For this, I swore they would pay. 

The nest had somewhere around 200 members, so it took me a couple of hours to work my way through their ranks. And their disgusting blood covered me ear to claw tips by the time I was done, their screeches and hisses of death, pain and confusion, shock, making me even more furious at them. 

" _SHUT THE FUCK UP_!" I growled at them as they continued to yell to each other, trying to rally to protect their young, and their females. But I left none alive. 

Whatever humans were remaining in this world were _mine_. And I must try to restore the balance, or there may be nothing left to entertain me, Mother Gaia killing off all sentient creatures in anger at the imbalance. So I must kill as many vampír as they had killed of the humans. 

It would take me years to track all of the little idiots down. 

The shock at their own weakness was almost amusing enough to make the slaughter entertaining rather than tedious. Obviously I had been gone too long, if they truly believed they were on the top of the food chain. How long could I have been asleep that they forgot the innate fear of the predator that had stalked them since before the beginning of time? 

I burned the nest to the earth when I stalked away, licking the copious, repugnant blood from my claws and fingers, growling in the back of my throat when I felt it begin to dry, stiffen and harden against my skin. 

I would need to find a lake or river soon, because there was nothing worse in this entropic world than smelling of vampír. Except maybe smelling of vampír, drakán, and my own bodily odors accumulated over many days. I was revolting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think <3


	4. The Monster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You are asking me to help this human town, yes?"

I knew my father was still alive. He had to be, because if he wasn't the last year of my life was pointless. My travels, the vampires I had killed all on my own, even though many people laughed at me and called me a child-- all of it would be in vain. 

But even my endless, boundless hope was beginning to fade. Because for what reason would the vampires need to keep a human alive for so long? 

And then I heard of the Farm-- the blood farm the vampires had set up for strong humans, where they kept them as pets and fed from them regularly. Some said the pets were even tied to beds with IV's. I was sick at the thought, but if my father was there, at least he was still alive. 

I gathered supplies for my trip to the Farm in Northcrest-- one of the few remaining human strongholds nestled in the Rocky Mountains of what my father had said was once a state called Colorado long before I was born, when vampires were myth and humans were at the top of the food chain. 

My father had some strange stories he liked to tell me about when he was a kid like me. 

When I finished in the general store, trading for as much as I could with the meat I had hunted, and the vampire blood I had accumulated over the last few months (doctors use it for healing), I made my way out towards the southern gate that led down the mountain. 

But that was when the world came crashing down around me, although it would take days for me to fully grasp how much my world had changed in just a few minutes. 

My first sight of her sent shivers down my spine and I could feel my breaths quicken and the little hairs on my body standing on end.

 _Run_ , my body tried to tell me. _Run!_

I ignored the warning in my mind, but kept an eye on the woman, inching around her as she made her slow, studious way through the town center. There were only a few people in the center at that time of day-- most were on the other end of the town in the fields-- but I could see with one glance around that I wasn't the only person who had a strange reaction to the woman. A few women grabbed their playing children and dragged them into their homes, the blacksmith gripped the sword he was working on and stared the woman down, his knuckles turning as white as his terror-pale face, and a few boys around my age ran in the direction of the fields and barn-- I assume maybe to gather assistance. 

Which was strange, because she looked perfectly normal. 

... At least, at first glance. 

On closer inspection, her blood red hair that hung in ropes down her back was just a bit too deeply red. Her pale skin was the color of the full moon on a starless night. And her eyes. 

God, I had seen the red of vampire eyes, but her eyes were something different-- pure black, but with a center of red that rivaled her hair in its fiery intensity. 

Everything about her but her eyes was almost human, but just too extreme. Too pale. Too deeply colored. Her nails too long, too sharp, her teeth sticking out of her mouth like a predator, her ears seemingly twitching as she studied us. 

But those eyes told a different story. 

What kind of vampire was this? What kind of new evil had been unleashed here? 

And why was she smiling at me as if she was genuinely glad to see me?

She mumbled something in a language I had never heard before, harsh and dragging, before a dozen or so men ran into the town center and confronted her. 

The town head man, a hulking brute I knew only by his merciless and brutal reputation, who went by the apt moniker of Ogre, moved far too close to the female, and I could see the moment her focus moved from me to him fully, because his entire body went rigid and he took three halting steps back. 

"This is a human town. We welcome no others!" the head man said, his voice strong. But there was fear there. I could hear it. Five of the men flanking him had guns trained on the female, but she barely even glanced at them before she seemingly noted them as inconsequential. "Leave now, vampire. You're outnumbered!" 

I knew the man was only talking at all, rather than outright attacking, because he was just as taken aback and terrified as the rest of us. Something in the back of my mind was screaming that the female could kill us all and it wouldn't even faze her or set her back. 

"Ah. Not my favorite language spoken by humans, but it is serviceable," the female said, her voice raspy and deep, almost a growl, her accent lyrical. She made a strange gesture with her left hand and smiled gently, as if trying to calm us. 

It didn't work in the least. For any of the humans around her. 

"I am merely passing through and I was curious. You are the first humans I have come across, and I have been awake for many moons now."

"I will not repeat myself again. Leave now, vampire."

The female's smile faltered as her eyes flickered to the townspeople who were beginning to congregate around the head man, to me, and then back to Ogre. 

"I am not vampire. Please do not say this again, for I will find insult in your words."

"I don't care what you are-- you're not human. Get out!"

The female cocked her head, the red in her eyes flashing as her ears visibly flickered. And then she held both hands up and took a few deliberate steps back. 

"I mean no harm. I wish to aid you. A nest of vampír was... ah... destroyed about 17 leagues to your west. And once the nearest nest found out, they were angry. They come for your town, assuming it was you. I have come to protect you."

"You would protect us against your own kind?"

"I will not tell you again, human. Calling me vampire is an insult I will not tolerate. I will restore the balance, but one more town destroyed will not the world break."

"This is your last warning. Leave now. Or my men will open fire."

That was when I picked up what I knew the female had heard that had caused her to pause. Dozens... no, hundreds of vampires converged on the small town. 

Every man, woman and child in that town would be dead in a matter of hours. 

So I did something crazy. To this day, so many years later, I have no idea what was running through my mind as I ran to the female, pushing past Ogre's body that outweighed me by at least 150 pounds. And I was yanking on her hand and signing desperately. 

_Help them. Please, don't let them die._

But of course, she didn't understand. 

Nobody had understood my silent words since my father had been ripped from my life. 

"Hello, child," she whispered down at me, her eyes bright and her smile almost... warm. "You speak with your hands? Do your ears work?"

I nodded to both of her questions, trying to calm my thundering heart. God, she was terrifying. My adrenaline was spiking just standing that close to her, my fingers shaking against her skin. 

"I will not hurt you, child," she said, her voice even gentler, as if she was trying to soothe me, calm me. 

And somehow, it worked. I knew she wasn't lying. She genuinely didn't want to hurt me. 

But there was still that part in the back of my mind, a primal bit of myself that huddled in a corner and whimpered in terror. 

Just because she didn't currently want to rip out my heart didn't mean she wouldn't if she changed her mind. 

"You are asking me to help this human town, yes?"


	5. Lady Protector

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I like you. I protect and keep safe the things I like."

The child nodded vigorously in answer to my question, and the large human who had confronted me, the human leader I assumed, grumbled in anger. 

"We don't need your help!"

I shook my head at him and turned back to the boy with what I hoped was a genuine smile. 

"For you, brave boy, I will protect them."

And then I held true to my words. I ran from the humans, too fast for them to see, and butchered every vampír that dared to track me. I showed no mercy, for there is none in me. 

When my skin was coated in vampír blood and their dying screams had calmed and then were silent, I left the field of carcasses and moved back into the town I had left the mute child. 

The one who had dared to touch me. The one who had sensed what I truly am, the monster he faced, and yet had met my eyes and pled for the lives of people who were not even his own. His travel gear showed he was only passing through the town, as I was, and yet he had faced down his great fear to beg for the lives of humans who were not part of his blood or clan. 

This was a human child, barely 11 summers if humans aged as they did the last time I walked the earth, I wanted to protect and learn of. He was... _intriguing_. 

The moment I stepped past the stone gate that surrounded the town and moved back towards the town center where I had left the child, I knew something was wrong. I could scent it in the air as I stalked closer to the humans. 

As I reached the large crowd of them, I saw immediately what I had scented. 

The brawny human leader was standing over the mute boy, with one of their exploding fire weapons pointed directly at the child's head. The boy held both of his hands up in surrender, his cheek bruised— probably from the hit that sent him to the earth. 

I moved swiftly, slashing my claws against the big human's neck, severing his life, and lifting the child into my arms. 

Without a backwards glance, I made my way back out of the town, past the field of dead vampír, and to safety. A few of the humans' aim was true, and I felt a dozen or so of the fire projectiles bouncing off of my back before I managed to make it past the town gates. The projectiles stung when they impacted, but they didn't break my skin and draw blood, so I deigned to let the humans live. 

When I set the child down on his feet in a small clearing of trees next to a thin river, he glared up at me with wide, almost _annoyed_ eyes. 

Unholy gods below, this child was bravery incarnate. 

His hands moved in intricate maneuvers and signs. And as was the case with any language, the more I watched and studied, the more I understood. 

The child was angry with me... for killing the human who had hurt him. 

"Why did he hit you?" I asked, cutting off the hand signs he was so vigorously throwing at me. 

The boy rolled his eyes and pointed at me. 

Ah. Of course. He had sided with the enemy. 

"Are you alright?" 

The child studied me, his gaze thoughtful, before he nodded and made an appreciative gesture with his hand. 

"You're welcome," I answered, moving to sit and lean against a tree. "I like you. I protect and keep safe the things I like."

The boy frowned and inched closer to me. The sun was beginning to set behind him, and the air had begun to cool already. It would be a cold night, and the child's clothes were threadbare at best. 

His hands moved rapidly and I studied them, trying to decipher what he was trying to say. 

"The vampír? Yes, they are all dead."

The child looked startled, but then he pointed at me and I nodded.

"I killed them. That town is safe from that nest now."

The boy sat back on his heels and shook his head, then smiled. I liked that smile. He was a precious human.


	6. The Agreement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You, _broyjun_ , intrigue me. I follow you, and I will protect you from your enemies."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don’t make deals with the devil....

That first night I spent lying beside the monster who had saved my life was fraught with worry over the events of the day, and yet I was calmer and felt more secure than I had in... possibly ever. 

I shivered in the cold through the night, although the female gave off heat like a fire. We slept back-to-back, although even that close had my primal fear on edge. By morning she was gone, only to return a few minutes after I blearily walked around the little clearing, trying to discover where she had gone. Trying to decide if I was upset or relieved that she was gone. 

She carried a sturdy travel bag filled with clothes, dried food, blankets and soap. 

I didn't ask her where she got the supplies. It was the first of many times I didn't ask about things she did. 

It was the next step down the road to my own damnation. 

She seemed to almost understand my hand signs, so I asked her what she would do now-- where she was going. And she smiled at me almost mockingly. 

"You, _broyjun_ , intrigue me. I follow you, and I will protect you from your enemies."

I asked her what the word she had said-- broyjun-- was and her smile deepened, showing off sharp white teeth that sent a spark of fear down my spine. 

"Little brave heart," she answered, and shrugged. "I do not know your name, and I don't wish to call you boy, for that is disrespectful to the courage you have shown. I will learn the language of your hands with just a bit more time, but for now, you are my _broyjun_." 

_You will help me?_ I asked her, hoping she understood, feeling hope soar for the first time in months. I had begun to give up hope, but this creature, this monster that oozed evil and power, who had killed dozens, if not hundreds, of vampires in the matter of minutes, was a new hope I could never have anticipated. And I knew accepting her help was selling my soul to the devil. 

But I was willing to do anything to bring my father back to me-- to save him from the hell he was undoubtedly in even then. 

"What is your mission, child?"

_My father— a year ago, he was taken by the vampires. I have been searching for him ever since._

I told her about the Farm, and everything else I had heard over the months, making sure to keep my movements slow and clear. And she seemed to follow along well enough, pausing me every few minutes to clarify a sign before nodding for me to continue. 

When I was finished, the monster nodded and stood, dusting off the dark pants she wore. 

"Let's go rescue your sire, _broyjun_."


	7. The Friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I am known by names unnumbered, _broyjun_. Every culture in human history has had another name for me, the vampír and drakán and fäer still more. You may call me what you like."

As we travelled in the direction the monster led us, she told me she had been asleep for millennia and was an ancient creature that predated even the vampires. She spoke of other creatures, and I was horrified to learn there was more that preyed on humans than the vampires. 

She told me of the balance of the world, and her mission to right it by methodically destroying the vampire nests until they were forced back underground. 

When I asked her name, she told me she had many. 

"I am known by names unnumbered, _broyjun_. Every culture in human history has had another name for me, the vampír and drakán and fäer still more. You may call me what you like."

So I gave her a name that I hoped would be a good omen, if there was such a thing, a name that was gentle and feminine and pretty. Unlike the dark, hellish monster my every instinct screamed she was. 

I called her Lily. My father told me it was my mother's favorite flower, and he had called her his lily. So I thought it was fitting to give her a name that had meant so much to the man we were going to save. 

Lily snorted at the name, once she had deciphered what I was signing, and then shook her head with a bemused smile. 

"I will definitely be staying awake for longer this time. You are fascinating."

As we travelled, Lily hunted for me, provided for me (and I continued to ignore where she gathered the supplies that she brought to me from), and confessed that she enjoyed my silence immensely. 

"I hate the disorder of noisy creatures. But you are silent and watchful and soothing. It is relaxing to be with you, _broyjun_."

After more than a week of travel, following the directions I had gleaned from the many rumors I had eavesdropped on in the various human settlements I had passed through in the last year, we reached the Farm. And all of my fears were realized. 

The Farm was a large building— what my father had always called a warehouse. It was on the edge of a lake that stretched out as far as I could see, and was surrounded by broken down, rusted vehicles. 

But it wasn't the building itself that struck fear into me at the sight. It was the medical vehicles going to and from the front loading entrance of the building-- and the dozens upon dozens of vampires shuffling to and fro, loading containers into the medical vehicles. 

A sharp sniff from Lily, and her eyes widened, her eyes seeming to darken as she flashed her sharp fangs. 

"Blood, _broyjun_. Those containers are filled to the brim with human blood. Fresh. Warm. And there are hundreds of humans in that metal structure." 

I shivered, wrapping my arms around myself as I stepped back into the trees that blocked us from view of the building below. 

How can we possibly get in past that many— I began to ask, but Lily waved her hand as if brushing me off. 

"I can get you in, _broyjun_. That is not a problem. I worry for your sire. If he is alive, the bite of a vampír—"

— _I know. But he's alive, and he'll be fine. He has to be_ , I signed, trying not to let my desperation show. 

Lily watched me for a moment, but I felt none of the pity, disbelief or frustration from her that I normally felt when I spoke to others of rescuing my father. She studied me with an almost clinical coldness before she smiled wickedly and nodded. 

"I am very fond of you, little human. I will get you in to the humans, and if he be there, we will rescue your sire. Stay safe here until I call for you."

Before I could answer, Lily was gone, and seconds later the sounds of brutal death met my sensitive ears. I resisted the urge to cover them to block out the wet screams, agonized moans and the sharp, deep growls I recognized as Lily, as I inched forward to get a good look at the warehouse. 

By the time I walked the few feet back out to the ledge and could see the warehouse again, there were at least a dozen dead vampires lying in various death poses, and another half dozen writhing, not quite dead but definitely not whole. 

Lily bounced from one vampire to another, her claws and fangs tearing into their pale flesh, her skin soaked in blood. And the entire time she cackled and giggled, almost seeming to mock the other monsters as she danced around them, always just out of reach of their defensive moves. 

Within five minutes, she froze and glanced up at me. I took that as her signal for me to come down, and I made my way to the front of the warehouse as quickly as my shaking legs would take me. 

What I saw when I stepped through the doors I will not explain in great detail, for it has been many years, and I have seen many such Farms, but none have hit me so hard as that first one. To this day I wake in a cold sweat, my chest heaving and my body frantically trying to escape the sights, smells and absolute agony that swept over me in those first few seconds after I entered that damned place. 

Suffice it to say that there were at least 200 humans, probably more, all tied to IVs, all in various degrees of decay. Many were dead, some even dead so long they had begun to stink and decompose. 

I took in a deep breath and made my way through the rows, desperately studying dead and dying bodies, praying that I recognized one. And praying that I didn't. 

Until, finally, I did recognize one. 

But it wasn't my father. 

"...Jayk...?" Ada breathed, her almost concave chest rising and falling irregularly. The bite marks that covered her body weren't even red— they were a dark purple, like bruises— and she looked at least half the size she had been the last time I had seen her...

Being dragged away by the vampires. With my father.


	8. Lady Desecration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “That human is mine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think. I’m bad at short stories, so I’ve been working on them, and this is one of the less terrible shots at them :)

The little human, his feet against the earth as silent as his mouth, had been in the metal structure for a few minutes before I heard the scuffle. I moved into the darkness of the metal enclosure, wrinkling my nose at the stench of death, decay and rot that wafted over me. 

The child was kneeling beside a half-dead human female, and had just noticed the 6 vampír that surrounded him. He scrambled back, but the closest vampír, an alpha by the scent of him, leaned down and gripped the little human's tunic lapels and lifted him up and off his feet. 

"That human is mine," I growled, glaring the alpha down and stalking forward. I could sense many centuries in this vampír, so I hoped he at least would know who I am. "Get your disgusting paws off of him." 

The alpha met my eyes, his widening as his nostrils flared. He knew I was the one who had decimated his nest mates outside in the dirt. And he sensed my bloodlust for him and the remaining bottom feeders that dared tear at the balance of my earth. 

Who dared to forget that they were far from the darkest evil on this planet. 

Without a word, he slit the child's throat with a single claw, and my rage was boundless. The child's blood spilled dark and warm down his neck as I took the heads of each vampír, leaving the alpha for last, letting him see the death of the last of his family before I separated his limbs, then his head, letting him feel each moment of his death. 

The child's gurgles for breath were quieting as I moved to his body, ignoring the human female who gasped sharply as I stepped to the child's prone form and knelt by his side. 

" _Broyjun_ ," I mumbled, fingering the blood that dropped into the stone beneath him. The child's eyes met mine, wet and filled with pain and fear. But it was the other thing I saw in his eyes, the deep, dark bit of his soul I could see inside of him that directed my next movements. The absolute, desperate, dark desire for revenge. For blood. To survive. And as I recognized the courage and fortitude in the child, I did something I had never done before. 

I shared the blood in my veins, and a bit of me was imparted into the child, leaving him gasping for breath, overwhelmed by the rush of power, but healed and strong. 

He stared at me with wide eyes as I lifted him to his feet and brushed the blood and dirt off his shirt. 

"You need new clothes, little human," I said, turning to the humans that surrounded us. Most were so far past life they were unaware of anything around them. The others watched us with terrified, pleading eyes. 

And I knew what they needed, even if the boy may not understand. For once bitten by a vampír, a human would not live past a week. The vampír venom would take their life, slowly, painfully, eating them from the inside. 

And so I led the child out of the large metal enclosure, told him to stay outside until I came for him, and then made my methodical way through the humans, ending their lives with quick passes of my claws. It took but a few minutes, and when I finished, I felt the eyes of the child on me and wondered if he would understand the necessity of my mercy.


	9. The Lady Goddess

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Rest, _broyjun_. Your soul has called to mine, we are joined by blood, and you and I will deliver a reckoning on the cretins who dared to tear the fabric of my world. I will protect you. Always, little human. I protect what is mine."

Lily and I made camp a few miles from the warehouse. It took a few minutes, but I had managed to suction gas from some of the vehicles, cover the warehouse with it, and set it aflame. Lily emerged only a moment later, watching me, studying me with that same cold, calculated gaze she favored. 

"I have never done that before, human," she said, her voice thoughtful and questioning. 

I had a hundred questions for her— what would her blood do to me, why had she saved me when I had been so sure I had only seconds more to live, why was she doing any of this— but I only shook my head and watched the flames until she gently gripped my arm and led me away. 

When we were comfortable in our camp, I told her what Ada had told me— that my father had been with her in the Farm for months— she didn't really know how long, as time, she said, moved differently in that warehouse than when she had been free— but he had led a rebellion what must have been only months before and all of the escaping humans had been killed. 

Including my father. 

When I tried to deny her words, she had grabbed my arm and met my eyes.

"Believe this, Jayk. He is dead. I saw them tear him apart before they killed most of the rest of us and led the others back into the darkness. I wish... I wish I had been one of the ones killed. It was a courageous end, and an almost merciful one."

Lily barely blinked as I sobbed into her shoulder, her hand awkwardly around my waist as I cried myself to sleep. 

Her last words to me, before the silent dark took me, were quiet and almost heartfelt. 

"Rest, _broyjun_. Your soul has called to mine, we are joined by blood, and you and I will deliver a reckoning on the cretins who dared to tear the fabric of my world. I will protect you. Always, little human. I protect what is mine."

This is the end of my story, so far. For now, we travel through the vast wastelands of what were once great civilizations. Most turn us away at the sight of Lily, my guardian and friend. Rumors travel ahead of us. I am called Demon Tamer, Monster Child, and Witch. Lily is called Demon, Monster, Hound of Hell, and the Scourge of Vampires. 

But we never leave a town without ensuring its safety at our departure. Lily cleans out countless nests in our mission to right the balance of the world. 

And with her blood flowing through my veins, strengthening me, as strong as any vampire, healing me, keeping me healthy and powerful, my protector and I fight side by side. 

Despite our friendship, as time has gone by, I have begun to wonder, as I revel in the blood that pours from the vampires we slaughter by the hundreds— once vampires are again hiding in the shadows and dark places of the world... will humanity have a new, far more terrifying evil to contend with? And if my Lily does turn on humanity next... will I have the strength to stand up to her, to fight to protect humanity, or will I be right there by her side?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All done. Let me know what you think! Did you enjoy reading? Did you hate it? Let me know! ;)


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